Part 11 (1/2)
NUT FOR ”CLIMBING BOYS”
[Ill.u.s.tration: 232]
One man may lead a horse to the water, but ten cannot make him drink, sayeth the adage; and so it might be said, any one might devise an act of parliament--but who can explain all its intentions and provisions--define its powers--and ill.u.s.trate its meanings? One clause will occasionally vitiate another; one section completely contradict the preceding one; the very objects of the legislature are often so pared away in committee, that a mere shadowy outline remains of what the original framer intended; and were it not for the bold hand of executive justice, the whole might be inoperative. The judge, happily, supplies the deficiency of the lawmaker--and the thing were perfect, if judges were not, like doctors, given to differ--and thus, occasionally, disseminate somewhat opposite notions of the statutes of the land.
Such being the case, it will not be deemed impertinent of one, who desires to conform in all respects to the law, to ask, from time to time, of our rulers and governors, certain questions, the answers to which, should he happily receive them, will be regarded by him as though written on tables of bra.s.s. Now, in a late session of parliament, some humane member brought in a bill to interdict the sweeping of chimneys by all persons small enough for the purpose, and ingeniously suggested supplying their place by others, whose size would have inevitably condemned them to perish in a flue. Never had philanthropist a greater share of popularity. Little sweeps sang his praises along the streets--penny periodicals had verses in his honour--the ”song of the soot” was set to music--and people, in the frenzy of their enthusiasm, so far forgot their chimneys, that scarcely a street in town had not, at least, one fire every night in the week. Meanwhile, the tender sweeplings had lost their occupation, they had p.r.o.nounced their farewell to the brush--what was to become of them? Alas, the legislature had not thought of that point; for, they were not influential enough to claim compensation. I grieve to think, but there is too much reason to fear, that many of them betook themselves to the ancient vocation of pickpockets. Yes, as Dr. Watts has it--
”Satan finds some mischief still For idle hands to do.”
The divisional police-offices were filled each morning with small ”suttees”--whose researches after handkerchiefs and snuff-boxes were of the most active kind; while their full-grown brethren, first impacted in a funnel of ten inches by eight, were cursing the Commons, and consigning to all manner of misfortune the benevolent framer of the bill.
Now, I cannot help asking myself, was this the intention of the legislature--did they really mean that big people should try to penetrate where little ones were not small enough to pa.s.s?--or was it some piece of conciliation to the climbing boys, that they should see their masters grilled and wasted, in revenge for ”the disabilities they had so long laboured under?” This point of great difficulty--and after much thought and deliberation, I have come to one solution of the whole question, and I only hope it may prove the right one. It is this. The bill is a parable--the climbing boy, and the full-grown sweep--and the chimney, and the householder, and the machine, are mere types which I would interpret thus:--the householder is John Bull, a good-natured, easy fellow, liking his ease, and studying his comfort--caring for his dinner, and detesting smoke above all things; he wishes to have his house neat and orderly, neither confusion nor disturbance--but his great dread is fire; the very thought of it sets him a-trembling all over.
Now, for years past, he has remarked that the small sweeps, who mount so glibly to the top of the flue, rarely do anything but make a noise--they scream and shout for ten minutes, or so, and then come down, with their eyes red, and their noses b.l.o.o.d.y, and cry themselves sick, till they get bread-and-b.u.t.ter. John is worried and fretted at all this; he remembers the time a good-sized sweep used to go up and rake down all the soot in no time. These were the old Tory ministers, who took such wise and safe precautions against fire, that an insurance-office was never needed.
”Not so now,” quoth John; ”'od! rabbit it, they've got their climbing boys, who are always bleating and bawling, for the neighbourhood to look at them--and yet, devil a bit of good they do the whole time.”
And now, who are these? you would ask. I'll tell you--the ”Climbing Boys” are the Howicks, and the Clements--the Smith O'Briens and the D'Israelis, and a host of others, sc.r.a.ping their way upwards, through soot and smoke, that they may put out their heads in high places, and cry ”'weep! weep!” and well may they--they've had a dirty journey--and black enough their hands are, I warrant you, before they got there.
To get rid of these, without offending them, John brings in his philanthropic bill, making it penal to employ them, or to have any other than the old legitimate sweeps, that know every turn of the flue, and have gone up and down any time these twenty years. No new machine for him--no Whig contrivance, to sc.r.a.pe the bricks and burn the house--but the responsible full-grown sweeps--who, if the pa.s.sage be narrow, have strength to force their way, and take good care not to get dust in their eyes in the process.
Such is my interpretation of the bill, and I only trust a discerning public may agree with me.
A NUT FOR ”THE SUBDIVISION OF LABOUR.”
I forget the place, and the occasion also, but I have a kind of misty recollection of having once, in these nutting excursions of mine, been excessively eloquent on the subject of the advantages derivable from division of labour.
Not a walk or condition in life is there to which it has not penetrated; and while natural talents have become cultivated from finding their most congenial sphere of operation, immense results have accrued in every art and science where a higher degree of perfection has been thus attained.
Your doctor and your lawyer now-a-days select the precise portion of your person or property they intend to operate on. The oculist and the aurist, and the odontalgist and the pedicurist, all are suggestive of various local sufferings, by which they bound their skill; and so, the equity lawyer and the common-law lawyer, the special pleader and the bar orator, have subdivided knavery, without diminis.h.i.+ng its amount. Even in literature, there are the heavy men who ”do” the politics, and the quiet men who do the statistics, and the rough-and-ready men, who are a kind of servants-of-all-work, and so on. In universities, there is the science man and the cla.s.sical man, the man of simple equations and the man of spondees. Painting has its bright colourists and its more sombre-loving artists, and so on--the great camps of party would seem to have given the impulse to every condition of life, and ”speciality” is the order of the day.
No sooner is a new discovery made, no matter whether in the skies above, or the dark bowels of the earth, than an opportunity of disagreement is sure to arise. Two, mayhap three, gentlemen, profess diversity of opinion; followers are never lacking, let any one be fool enough to turn leader--and straightway there comes out a new sect, with a Greek name for a t.i.tle.
It is only the other day, men began to find out that primitive rocks, and basalt, ochre, and sandstone, had lived a long time, and must surely know something of antiquity--if they only could tell it. The stones, from that hour, had an unhappy time of it--men went about in gangs with hammers and crowbars, s.h.i.+vering this and shattering that--picking holes in respectable old rocks, that never had a word said against them, and peeping into ”quarts,” (*) like a policeman.
* Query ”quartz.”--Devil.
Men must be quarrelsome, you'd say, if they could fight about paving-stones--but so they did. One set would have it that the world was all cinders, and another set insisted it was only slack--and so, they called themselves Plutonians and Neptunians, and made great converts to their respective opinions.
Gulliver tells us of ”Big-endians” and ”Little-endians,” who hated each other like poison; and thus it is, our social condition is like a row in an Irish fair, where one strikes somebody, and n.o.body thinks the other right.
Oh! for the happy days of heretofore, when the two kings of Brentford smelled at one nosegay. It couldn't happen now, I promise you.
One of their majesties would have insisted on the petals, and the other been equally imperative regarding the stamina: they'd have pushed their claims with all the weight of their influence, and there would have been soon little vestige of a nosegay between them.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 237]
But to come back, for all this is digression. The subdivision of labour, with all its advantages, has its reverse to the medal. You are ill, for instance. You have been dining with the Lord Mayor, and hip-hipping to the health of her Majesty's ministers; or drinking, mayhap, nine times nine to the independence of Poland, or civil and religious liberty all over the globe--or any other fiction of large dinners. You go home, with your head aching from bad wine, bad speeches, and bad music; your wife sees you look excessively flushed; your eyes have got an odd kind of expression, far too much of the white being visible; a half shut-up look, like a pastry-cook's shop on Sunday; there are evident signs, from blackness of the lips, that in your English ardour for the navy you have made a ”port-hole” of your mouth; in fact, you have a species of semi-apoplectic threatening, that bodes ill for the insurance company.